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"We've got no resilience for people to take time off for sickness or family matters," he said.

"People have decided to leave Surrey because it's so expensive to live here, and the recruitment freeze means we can't replace them.

"It's down to the public. What we would really like is to get the public onside, because it's a public service. We're doing our best, but we're struggling and it's not going to get any better soon."

Another firefighter, from Painshill fire station, said: "We should have 20 firefighters but at the moment, we only have 18 so we are relying on the goodwill of our firefighters to work overtime and make up the shortage."

He added the staffing shortages were due to a six-year recruitment freeze imposed by fire authority Surrey County Council .

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"People are retiring or applying for jobs in London where they know the fire service is more secure and valued than it is here," he added.

"Surrey County Council - please stop the cuts, you have taken us down to the bone, the only thing left to do is to remove pumps and close fire stations which is very worrying.

"We are here to help the public in potentially life threatening situations and we need to be able to do that."

A shortage of firefighters meant Woking and Camberley fire stations could only operate one fire engine each on Monday (October 23) (Image: Surrey Advertiser)

A spokesman for Surrey County Council said: "We have a number of plans in place to ensure the right people and equipment are in the right place at the right time.

"Using sophisticated technology we can monitor fire engines and other vehicles' predicted response times around the county meaning we regularly move them to ensure that we can respond to incidents as quickly as possible.

"If a station is understaffed, a tactical decision is made at a senior level to reallocate staff and equipment to ensure that fire cover continues to be met across the county."

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